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Exploring the future of Dracula in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

This ain't no Edward Cullen; Dracula in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a monstrous, blood-sucking antihero.

Castlevania is a series with a very diverse history.

It began as a straight action platformer almost thirty years ago, with a brave hero taking on classic horror characters and finally facing off against Dracula himself. Its sequels added and expanded the now eponymous "Metroidvania" feature of large, free-roaming levels that are unlocked piecemeal as the player gains new abilities.

2010's Lords of Shadow was a departure for the venerable series. instead of 2D platforming in an open world, it featured small, discrete levels with little chance to revisit areas to finish finding and collecting every hidden item. In its place was God of War style brawling, much of it against epic enemies such as immense werewolves.

While it received its share of criticism, Lords of Shadow did well enough to warrant a sequel, and in just a few weeks that sequel will be on retail shelves. Taking place years after the events of the previous entry, it sees the first game's hero transformed into a vampire lord and going by the familiar moniker of Dracula.

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Dave Cox, lead producer on Lords of Shadow 2, says that this is a Dracula unlike any we have seen before. "He is evil, but he thinks he's doing the right thing, that's he's been wronged," he told me in a recent interview. "We see him with his son being very fatherly, we see him with his dead wife, we see him crying and showing emotions, and I think that's a side of Dracula that perhaps we haven't seen before."

"We got a taste of it in Gary Oldman's performance in Coppola's movie, but we haven't really seen it in a modern take on Dracula."

So, this is a Dracula with emotions and vulnerability, who feels love and grief. Is this a soft, squishy, romantic take, then? "We didn't want a True Blood or a Twilight," Cox said with a laugh. "We wanted to show vampires being nasty, because they are creatures that feed on human blood, and we have some scenes in the game that I think will make players feel uncomfortable."

Cox cited one particularly seminal film as his primary inspiration: Katherine Bigelow's long budget vampire masterpiece Near Dark. "I didn't want a Hammer Horror Dracula; I wanted a modern, animalistic vampire," he said. "At the same time, this is a character who is surrounded by forces that are trying to save and redeem him, and other forces of evil that are trying to keep him in place."

"We like to show good characters doing evil things, and likewise evil characters doing good things, and I think that's a great unexpected surprise for players to think, wait, who are the bad guys here? I think that's what makes a story interesting."

"If you think about Walter from Breaking Bad or Tony Soprano, those kinds of characters, these are evil characters doing horrible things, but you find yourself rooting for them. You come to like them, in a way, even though they're horrible, and it makes you question yourself." Cox thought for a moment and added, "There's a fine line, of course, and I hope we've pulled it off, because if someone's going to spend 20 hours exploring this world with Dracula they'd better like the character."

The story this time around revolves around Dracula being weary of his never-ending undeath, and seeking out a powerful being who can end his life permanently, granting him a true death. Cox skirted carefully around spoilers, but gave a rough sketch of the plot. "A character from the previous game makes him an offer, because Satan is coming back into the world at the End of Days, and the only person who's ever defeated Satan is Gabriel Belmont in the first Lords of Shadow, and the only person who can defeat him today is Dracula at the height of his powers," he explained.

"Zobek, the Lord of the Dead, offers to grant Dracula the True Death, as he is the only one able to do that, if helps him defeat Satan. However, there's a lot more going on, and it's slowly revealed as the story goes on." He stopped at that point, and then added, "We like surprising players, so let's just say there are a few twists and turns along the way."

Apart from the story, Lords of Shadow 2 has been refreshed and revamped in many other ways. The cramped environments of the first game have been replaced with gigantic spaces of breathtakingly epic scale. Castlevania-style backtracking and exploration is also making a comeback.

"We've kept everything the players liked but fixed things they didn't," Cox explained. "Like, people would say they loved the combat, but hated that they couldn't move the camera and look around the levels properly, so that's in the sequel. I think it's also more ambitious; as soon as you start it up it feels bigger, better, more polished."

Perhaps the biggest overhaul is in the fighting mechanics, as Cox explained. "We've beefed up the combat system quite substantially. In the first game you had just your whip, but in this game you have two additional weapons: the void sword and the chaos claws. We have enemies that have weaknesses to just one or the other. The void sword is what you use to recoup your health - you hit an enemy, that gives you health back, but you have to get up close and personal to use it. The chaos claws are used to break enemy defences; a lot of enemies have shields and armour and the like and you need to break down their defences in order to use other weapons."

"We've also added a mastery system, because in hack and slash games, people tend to just mash the same button or the same combos over and over, and the mastery system kind of forces players to use a variety of attacks. So if you have a combo and use it over and over again in the game, you fill its gauge, and when it's completely filled you're able to use that power to level up your weapon. This means that if you just spam the basic attack button, your weapons will stay at level one, and you'll find the game very challenging. I like to think of it as a thinking man's hack and slash."

Cox is also very proud of the new camera system, a smart player-controlled camera that replaces the often-complained-about rigid camera in the previous game. "A free camera can be really annoying - you can fail to see enemies, miss important things in a level. One of the benefits of a fixed camera is that it shows you the whole battlefield, and you can see everything important," Cox explained.

"What we've tried to do is design a camera that feels like a fixed camera, but at any point you can move it. We've found in testing that a lot of players don't move it - they're happy with it as it is. You can still look around and explore, but the camera will quickly shift back to where it's supposed to be. I think it's one of the biggest achievements in the game, and we're very proud of it. We spent literally three years making this camera, just tweaking it and making it feel right."

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 looks set to improve upon the original game in almost every way, but also maintain the quality of its best features. It retains the standard of the first game's voice cast, for example, with the great Scottish character actor Robert Carlyle confirmed to be returning as the voice of Dracula. Fan favourite Patrick Stewart is also confirmed to be coming back to voice Zobek, the lord of death.

Those who want to try a new kind of Dracula can do so when it lands on retail shelves on 27 February, on PS3, Xbox 360, and Windows PC.

1 comment so far

I love the traditional Castlevania series, but I've never tried LoS. Probably because it variously gets described as "like God of War". Hack n Slash is a totally different beast to old school Castlevania, but I don''t necessarily have a problem with that. I just don't seem to enjoy what bigger fans of the genre enjoy. I love the finesse of dodge counters and the importance of timing and spacing and move selection. Sometimes I think that isn't hack and slash, and is more Dark Souls, or a proper fighting game.

I don't know. Combat is definitely important, and I'm not convinced adding more weapons that specific enemies have weaknesses to is the key. The void sword sounds it could be an interesting choice, supporting an alternate playing style altogether (riskier, more aggressive play with less defense/counter moves).But the claws sound more like "Oh, enemy X is in this group, I'll need to bash their armor off with the claws before I can get on with fighting them". I'm intrigued, but if memory serves me I had other Hack and Slash games on my watch list for when the hunger strikes.